vRealize Operations 8.0 -What’s new?

I was very fortunate to be invited along to a blogger briefing organised by VMware for the vExpert Cloud Management Program. We were given a presentation outlining what will be coming next including a look at the new release of vRealize Operations.

It is clear VMware have been working hard behind the scenes with the next versions of their many products and vRealize Operations and related products are no exception.

I shall cover off the major items and all other changes and improvements that will arrive with vROps 8.0, so let’s take a look at what is next in store.

Continuous Availability

Going beyond High Availability – Of all the improvements to land this one really stood out to me. Continuous availability extends the vROps cluster to another DC. So, for instance you can have a Master Replica node in another Datacentre which means you can take one site offline and still provide full access to the vROps data and features. This is something I know many customers have been wanting a long time for and will be very well received.

Layer 3 networks are supported (as you would hope and expect) but further details on the network requirements have not yet been finalised.

vRealize Operations Cloud – SaaS

This is exactly what it sounds like, a hosted vROps that you can consume as any other VMware SaaS offering.

It follows a very familiar vROps architectural model in that you will be required to deploy a Cloud Proxy Appliance (remote collector) in the target network which you want to monitor. Once deployed you connect the target vCenters in your network while logged into the SaaS platform just as you would do with a normal installation of vROps.

This product will be in Tech Preview in Q3 for a full release early 2020.

Troubleshooting Workbench

For the last few years the Cloud Management team have been working really hard on improving the user experience of vROps to make life as easy as possible to use and get the information you need in vROps without compromising the depth. (no easy task to be honest) The addition of the Troubleshooting workbench is no exception.

So, what is it?

Essentially it aids in getting to the root cause of an issue while providing a single view that can easly scale in scope in and out while providing you with all the “evidence” (data) in a single view which you can then pin and compare with other sets of data.

You can even run multiple workbenches at the same time for flexibility.

Here you can see how it is laid out.

As ever the intention is to make it easier to get to the root cause of issues faster and will no doubt evolve and mature, but it is a really great addition to the toolset.

New what-if scenarios

Capacity planning is an important part of vROps and it is constantly improving and being refined in vROps and version 8.0 is no exception, scenarios can now be reflected across cloud platforms and different DCs in your organisation.

You can now do Costing by Datacentres (naturally Datacentres never share the same costs, so this is a welcome addition). Therefore, you can compare Datacentres to find which is best suited for the planned workload/s.

Further changes to the costings have been added such as Deprecation for Hosts which can now be factored into your scenarios, along with a new Management Pack for VMC on AWS which will also reflect costings.

Integration with vRealize Automation 8.0

As many of you will already know vRA 8 is coming and it is a completely new beast, so it is good to know that VMware are on point with offering integrations into their existing products.

This last feature, Import/Export of custom compliance standards, will be extremely useful and hopefully in the near future we will see a portal available for everyone to share their Complaince Standards in the same way that we can with custom dashboards in the sample exchange. (https://vrealize.vmware.com/sample-exchange/)

Closing Thoughts

So as you can see there are a lot of new and improved features in the next major release of vRealize Operations. I will point out I have not included every single line item that has changed, suffice to say the amount of positive changes is absolutely worth your time to go and check out.

I was pleasantly surprised by the SaaS offering and to be honest it was something that I had previously wondered why they had not considered such a service. So that is a good leap forward in their strategic thinking for cloud management.

With vRealize Business going EOL at the close of 2019 there has been some customer nervousness around how vROps will pick up the baton, it is clear that vROps is not a direct replacement but provides you the tools to achieve what you need in conjunction with VMware’s Cloud Health Tool.

To close, I am excited about the future of vRealize Operations, it is taking an ever more important role in the cloud management product set for VMware and for many businesses it has now become a go-to tool therefore these improvements and feature additions will only strengthen and sure up its place as a critical component in any SDDC solution.

Simon Eady is an Xtravirt Senior Consultant with over 20 years’ experience in the IT industry. He has delivered a wide range of projects including solutions for server consolidation, data centre migration and upgrade, and deployment of Microsoft and VMware product sets. His specialist areas include VMware virtualisation helping businesses create, develop and maintain a multi cloud strategy. Simon is also a vExpert 2014-19 and leader of the South West UK VMUG (VMware User Group).